Tulsa County signs deal with federal immigration officials

By Kevin Canfield, World staff reporter
7/9/2007 3:54 PM

The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office is a step closer to becoming the first law-enforcement agency in the state to participate in a federal program that gives local officials the power to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

An agreement between the Sheriff's Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement approved Monday by the Board of County Commissioners provides training and computer equipment that will enable Sheriff's Office employees to place detainers -- or holds -- on suspected illegal immigrants.

"We're eliminating all those calls that we have (been making) and it gives us first-hand knowledge and information to make those decisions ourselves," Sheriff Stanley Glanz said Monday.

A detainer gives federal officials the chance to determine whether an individual has violated immigration law. Currently, the Sheriff's Office must call federal immigration officials, relay the information it has on an individual, and wait for a call back.

Glanz estimated his department makes 10 to 15 calls each weekend.

Thirty Sheriff's Office employees -- 10 deputies and a total of 20 detention officers and other workers inside the jail -- will begin four to five weeks of training Aug. 20.

Federal officials will provide oversight of the program.

The training should be completed and the computer equipment in place by the end of September, Glanz said.


By Kevin Canfield, World staff reporter

On immigration, snatch a victory Senate defeat of a bill need not end efforts to bring both justice and fairness to current laws.

The Christian Science Monitor
July 2, 2007

Both gloat and glum hang over Washington after last week's Senate defeat of the immigration bill. But now what? Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has the best answer: Enforce current laws, however imperfect they may be.

"To regain the credibility with the American people that has been squandered over 30 years, we're going to have to be tough," he said, after losing a months-long struggle on Capitol Hill to pass immigration reform.

The squandering he refers to is the unfulfilled promise by several presidents to treat illegal immigrants with justice – and fairness.

The justice lies in better securing the border, timely deportation of those who break immigration laws, and sustained enforcement of laws against the hiring of illegal workers and against the forging of identification documents.

The fairness lies in finding more humane ways to conduct raids on work places with illegal workers, in better preventing exploitation of such migrants, and in not stepping on their basic civil rights.

President Bush has an opportunity to impel those US agencies that deal with immigration to better enforce the law. "A lot of Americans have lost faith in their government," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R) of Arizona, who helped negotiate the bipartisan bill. "They don't think we can control our borders. They don't think we can win a war. They don't think we can issue passports...."

Mr. Chertoff said he will work harder to fulfill last year's law that calls for 18,000 Border Patrol agents, 370 miles of border fencing, and a "virtual" fence of electronic surveillance. He's also persisting in creating a uniform standard for state driver's licenses.

And many Democrats and Republicans are ready to approve the $4.4 billion that Mr. Bush requested for additional border security and workplace enforcement during the negotiations over the failed bill.

As this new push for enforcement squeezes the number of illegal aliens available for work, employers can better use the existing – and legal – channels to find the foreign employees they need to stay in business. Congress can also easily raise the quotas for the number of visas from each country.

More improvements are also needed for a 1996 federal program called Basic Pilot that helps employers check the legality of applicants. While the bill defeated last week had a provision for a more secure system of checking applicants, Basic Pilot can go much further in detecting fake Social Security information. In the meantime, a few states are toughening their own laws on worker eligibility.

All of these existing federal programs can be better funded by Congress as it heads to a Sept. 30 deadline for appropriations.

Immigration reform need not be another third rail of US politics like Social Security. Since Sept. 11, the number of Americans who worry a great deal about illegal immigrants has jumped from 15 percent to 45 percent. Most welcome more foreign workers, but they want them in the United States legally.

A consensus has been created out of this near miss on reform to correct the federal government's failure to meet its basic responsibility on immigration. Americans are in Missourian show-me mood.

Now's the time to deliver. Then other immigration reforms can begin.

Frida Kahlo: Feminist, Chicana Heroine Kahlo's Larger-Than-Life Persona Meant Her Art Almost Got Lost Along the Way

ELISABETH MALKIN
The New York Times
July 13, 2007

Visitors pass through the largest-ever retrospective of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

IF YOU GO
American Stage is putting on a play celebrating the Mexican painter on the centennial of her birth.

WHAT: "Casa Blue: The Last Moments In The Life Of Frida Kahlo"

WHEN: July 20 to Aug. 12. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays; 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

LOCATION: 211 Third St., St. Petersburg

TICKETS: $26 to $35.

CONTACT: 727-823-PLAY.


MEXICO CITY
Frida Kahlo spun her own life into a myth. She was so good at it that her art almost got lost along the way. Her persona, fashioned over almost three decades of self-portraits, fused physical suffering and emotional isolation. Her frank depiction of a woman's psychic pain made her a feminist icon. She became a Chicana heroine and an unintended purveyor of Mexican kitsch. She is an emblem of confessional painting at a time when nothing is intimate anymore.

But this year, as Mexico celebrates the centenary of her birth, the largest retrospective ever of her work attempts to look beyond what Mexicans call Fridamania. The result is a rich view of her art and her life, one that broadens the perspective on her career beyond the narrow, cultish view that has at times threatened to obscure her work.

For the majority who know Kahlo's painting only from the movie version of her life or the unmistakable power of her face on a T-shirt, the exhibition that opened here last month at the Palacio de Bellas Artes may come as a surprise.

"She was completely instinctual," said Salomon Grimberg, one of the show's five curators. "She put into art things nobody had dared to put into art before. She was able to access her internal reality and shape it in such a way that it grabs the viewer."

"Her work is so flashy and so immediate that most people don't stop to look at her work as a painter," he added. "They just get caught up in the image. Finally, after 30 years, the work is being reappraised."

MORE THAN SELF-PORTRAITS

Among the 354 pieces on display are some of Kahlo's most famous self-portraits, but through lesser-known self-portraits, still lifes, portraits, drawings and watercolors, she emerges as an artist who gathered multiple influences into her own language.

Her first self-portrait, in a velvet dress, was painted at 19 for a faithless boyfriend and already shows the unflinching gaze that marked the later paintings. But here she is graceful, almost ethereal, quite different from the confrontational presence she was to become.

A tender portrait of her husband, the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, reveals an unexpected naturalism. Portraits of children show Kahlo working in different styles: a detailed painterliness with her baby niece, splashes of color for what appears to be a servant girl.

There is great humor in a frankly sexual still life titled "The Bride Who Is Frightened to See Life Open," for which Kahlo posed a doll in a white dress at the edge of a table of fruit, the papaya and watermelon sliced open.

Among the least-known works are her drawings and watercolors. A delicate 1930 drawing of a young woman, Ady Weber, shows a draftsmanship that few have attributed to Kahlo. There is a watercolor of Central Park and later fantastic drawings from the 1940s.

The show, which runs through Aug. 19, includes many photographic portraits of Kahlo, along with photos of her family and the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacan, where she was born and died, and where her home, the Casa Azul, now houses the Museo Frida Kahlo.

'CONSTANT EXPRESSION'

Some of her letters are on display, and so too is memorabilia recalling the Mexican Revolution of her childhood and the communism she embraced as an adult. The whole gives a juxtaposition of her intensely domestic existence - a house full of plants, pets, famous writers and painters - and the peculiarly violent history of her times.

"We wanted to present an integral Frida through all her mediums of expression," said Roxana Velasquez Martinez del Campo, the director of the Bellas Artes museum and another of the show's curators. "Frida is a woman in constant expression."

But the drama of her tumultuous emotional life and her physical pain made her work uneven, Velasquez said: "On occasion she is a great painter."

During her lifetime, Kahlo won only limited acclaim, dwarfed by Rivera's heroic reputation. She exhibited in New York and Paris, but the only solo show of her work in Mexico took place in 1953, a year before she died. Her reputation here too has grown, tinged with pride at the attention she has brought to Mexico.

In addition to the show at Bellas Artes, an exhibition of newly cataloged drawings, photographs, letters, pre-Hispanic codices and her famous Mexican dresses is on display at the museum in Coyoacan. They are some of the 22,000 items that were tucked away in trunks, wardrobes and bathrooms in the house and sealed until after the death of a Rivera patron.

Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, to a Mexican mother and a German immigrant father who was a well-known architectural and portrait photographer.

She contracted polio as a child, which left her with a withered leg. At 18, a tram accident injured her spine and pelvis and confined her to a plaster cast for months, then convalescence for three years. One of the surprises discovered in the trunks at her house is a photograph of a model of the accident, using a crude doll and a toy bus on a straw mat.

diego rivera

The rest of her life was marked by enormous physical pain and repeated operations. She married Rivera in 1929 and the pair left for the United States the following year, where he had commissions to paint murals in San Francisco, Detroit and New York.

In America, Kahlo found early collectors, including the actor Edward G. Robinson. Rivera encouraged and shaped his wife's painting. He was also constantly unfaithful, having affairs with, among others, Kahlo's sister. Kahlo responded by having affairs with both women and men, including Leon Trotsky. She would say that she had suffered two accidents, the tram and Diego - and that he was the worse.

"She created a body of work which is imbued with a sense of abandonment," said Grimberg, who compiled the catalogue raisonne of her work. "She shaped and reshaped her life over and over again so she would not be abandoned, she would not be rejected."

Her painting repeatedly refers to the pain of her attachment to Rivera. Among the most famous of those exhibited here is "The Two Fridas," from 1939, about the time the couple briefly divorced. On the left, Frida is dressed as a bride, her heart open and a cut artery dripping blood onto the dress. On the right, the everyday Frida is strong, her heart is healthy and she holds a cameo of Rivera as a child, a symbol that her union with him is far deeper than that of a marriage.

As Kahlo grew older, her health deteriorated rapidly and she became increasingly addicted to painkillers. The photographs of her in her final years reveal her utter exhaustion. But even then, she was clearly intensely aware of her image. "The collection of photos that were taken of her is another of her masterpieces," said Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, a photography specialist who has cataloged the photos found at her house.

Kahlo died at 47 after her leg was amputated below the knee. Tucked away in the retrospective is an anonymous newspaper photograph of her state funeral. Rivera is there, his sadness evident. The funeral took place in Bellas Artes - the same place the crowds are trooping through to revisit her work now.

Recruiters Often Sign Migrant Workers, Then Steal From Them

By TRACI CARL
The Associated Press
May 27, 2007

MONTERREY, Mexico - Standing in the baking sun outside the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, hundreds of Mexicans wait anxiously for temporary work visas. But even before they were fingerprinted and interviewed for the permit, many had already paid recruiters thousands of dollars in hopes of easing the way.

Supplying the U.S. guest worker program is a complex and sometimes criminal network of foreign recruiters who extort money from poor migrants and then keep them on the job by forcing them into debt or threatening their families back home.

Employers also are often at the recruiters' mercy, forced to accept workers who could be desperately in debt or simply wrong for the job.

And when their brief glimpse of the American dream becomes a nightmare, some legal guest workers simply disappear, melting into the growing U.S. population of illegal immigrants.

"Everyone has the same complaint. Everyone you see here is in debt," said Gilberto Escalante, a fisherman who swept his arm past at a crowd of migrant hopefuls waiting for visas. "But there aren't any other options. The company calls the recruiter direct, and the recruiter has all the power."

All employers need to do to secure federal permission to hire foreign workers is provide proof that no American wants the job. Once that request is granted, companies rely on recruiters to do the rest, and the U.S. government stands back.

Critics argue the program desperately needs oversight and protections for both employers and workers, but demands for such an overhaul appear to have been ignored in the Senate's tentative immigration reform proposal.

Escalante, from the western Mexican fishing town of Topolobampo, spent $1,500 on fees and other expenses dictated by the recruiter before even beginning the visa process, which costs roughly $200 in consular fees if approved.

Once approved, he climbed aboard a bus dictated by the recruiter, which charged him $110 - double the going rate - to carry him to his sixth year working in the shrimp industry in Mississippi.

Few file formal complaints or speak out against fraudulent practices. It's not worth risking the chance to earn more in an hour than many do in a full day of work in Mexico.

Todd Huizinga, a spokesman for the Monterrey consulate, said U.S. officials alert Mexican authorities when they become aware of suspicious activity, but described the recruiter process as a "private business."

"There is no U.S. law regulating recruiters," he said.

Some are legitimate and provide a valuable resource, charging a fair price for matching able-bodied foreigners to U.S. jobs. But in the absence of regulation and oversight, many overcharge migrants for handling visa applications and some simply steal the migrants' money without ever doing the paperwork.

This happens on a global scale, but there is no recruiting network more powerful or vast than in Mexico, where the U.S. government issued 90,466 agricultural and other seasonal work visas in 2005,70 percent of the 129,327 handed out globally that year.

In a recent report, the Southern Poverty Law Center said migrants from Asia and Latin America have signed over the deeds to their homes and faced insurmountable debt and near slavery in return for the promise of a visa.

Mexican law prohibits recruiters from charging exorbitant fees, but it's rarely enforced, and U.S. law is silent on the issue.

Recruiter Rene Urbano says he has constantly fought against abuse and fraud in his eight years matching Mexican workers with U.S. employers. Standing in the shade of a willow tree in the desert outpost of Huachichil, he encourages dozens of potato and apple orchard workers to put themselves on a waiting list, assuring them they don't have to pay until he finds them a job.

Some are skeptical. Other alleged recruiters have promised jobs, only to disappear with their money and passports.

Urbano said he never charges his clients more than $85 toward expenses and salaries for his network of Mexican recruiters, and that he works hard to match the right worker for the job. But others will take bribes and send "a taxi driver with a heart problem" to do hard, manual labor in the U.S., he said.

2 groups seek to block law vs. hiring migrants
New law takes effect Jan 1, 2008

The Associated Press
July 14, 2007

PHOENIX - Two business groups filed a lawsuit Friday challenging a new Arizona law that makes it a crime to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The Arizona Contractors Association and Arizona Employers For Immigration Reform asked a federal judge for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law, which was signed into law 11 days ago and takes effect Jan. 1.

The business groups argued the law is an unconstitutional attempt by the state to regulate immigration and that cracking down on such hirings is a responsibility of the federal government.

Julie Pace, a lawyer representing the groups, said the law would have a devastating effect on business in Arizona.

"Everyone is so fed up with Congress and the government with not giving us a legal immigration law, they are enacting illegal laws in different states to try to get Congress to act," Pace said.

Spokeswomen for Gov. Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Terry Goddard, who were sued in the legal challenge, declined to comment.
State Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa, the law's author, said the law was designed to protect honest employers who compete against businesses who take advantage of the low wages paid to illegal immigrants.

"We have done everything we can to make it a fair bill," Pearce said. "Is it tough? Yeah, but it's tough on those who break the law."

The goal of the law was to remove the economic incentive for immigrants to sneak across the border and help lessen Arizona's role as the busiest illegal gateway into the nation.

Advocates for tougher border enforcement said state punishments were needed because the federal government has failed to adequately enforce a federal law that already bars employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Many businesses and immigrant advocates said the new state law would weaken Arizona's business climate. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that illegal immigrants account for1 in 10 workers in the Arizona economy.

The law is part of a movement in many states to reject the long-standing notion that immigration enforcement was solely a federal responsibility.

The new Arizona law prohibits people from hiring illegal immigrants and requires all businesses to verify the employment eligibility of workers through a federal database.

Employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants could face a business license suspension lasting up to 10 days for a first offense.

Businesses that take steps to actively get around the ban will get mandatory 10-day license suspensions.

Second-time violators would have their business licenses revoked permanently.

The law provides a measure of legal protection to employers who can prove they have verified the eligibility of workers through the federal records database.

David Jones, president of the Arizona Contractors Association, said the law will cause anxiety for employers without producing the intended results.

"Do you believe that this is going to strengthen our borders? Not at all," Jones said.

The business groups that challenged the law said the new rules violate constitutional due-process protections by putting business licenses into jeopardy without giving violators a right to call witnesses to establish a worker's employment eligibility.

The federal employer sanctions prevent states from imposing civil or criminal penalties against those who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

While the federal law does allow for states to impose licensing punishments on violators, states can do so only after the violators have been found to have broken the federal law, the lawsuit said.

Advocates for tougher immigration enforcement have begun an effort to bring a stricter employer sanctions proposal to Arizona voters next year.

Under that measure, first-time violators would face the permanent revocation of their business licenses.

Even though the Legislature passed and the governor signed an employer sanctions proposal, organizers of the proposed ballot measure said they would continue to push the stricter rules as a way to head off attempts at weakening the new law.

Border drug traffickers may target foreign journalists

The Associated Press
July 14, 2007

MEXICO CITY - U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza condemned threats against American reporters Friday amid intelligence reports that drug traffickers were planning to kill foreign journalists along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a statement, Garza condemned threats against journalists as "an attempt to intimidate them from reporting the truth."

Garza gave no details of the threats, but a U.S. Embassy official said U.S. law enforcement officials have information that drug traffickers are planning to target foreign journalists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements.

While past attacks have targeted local reporters, the threat against foreign journalists indicated drug traffickers are becoming bolder in their attempts to silence news reports on their activities.

"We will work with authorities in the U.S. and Mexico to do everything possible to ensure the safety of American reporters working along both sides of our common border," Garza said.

The embassy official said the threats appeared concentrated around the violent city of Nuevo Laredo, where a new police chief was gunned down two years ago hours after taking office, and hundreds of people have been killed in drug violence since.

The San Antonio Express-News pulled its correspondent, Mariano Castillo, out of Laredo, Texas, across the border from Nuevo Laredo, late Thursday in light of the threats.

Eloy Aguilar, president of the Foreign Correspondents Association in Mexico, sent out an e-mail advising foreign correspondents to "be extremely careful and security conscious."

English-learners to get more intensive language classes

The Arizona Republic
July 14, 2007

Arizona's English-learners spend most of their school day with kids who already know the language. That changes this fall.

All kids still learning English will have to spend at least four of their five or six class hours in new courses in English grammar, phonetics, conversation, reading and writing.

It's a big change in the way the state's K-12 schools will teach English to about 135,000 kids whose primary language is most often Spanish, but also Navajo, Somali and dozens of others. Many of those kids now get about an hour of English a day.

"More time on task. That's a tried-and-true educational standard," said economist Alan Maguire, who headed a task force that created the state's new language-learning requirements. "If you want to learn how to play the piano, what do they tell you to do? They tell you to practice."

The new model is based on a law passed last summer. Supporters say the state is finally providing a structured language-learning model that replaces a dizzying variety of instructional methods used with varying success.

But critics warn that it is an expensive plan that segregates English-learners for most of their school day and limits their lessons in core subjects, such as math, science and history. It also will cut back on their socializing with peers.

In 2000, voters changed the way schools taught English-language learners. They shut down most bilingual learning programs and banned teaching, textbooks and instructional material in any language but English.

While the English-only message was clear, implementation was vague.
Unwilling to segregate English-learners, many districts offer English instruction for about an hour a day during the summer or after school. The rest of the time students sit in regular classrooms. How much English they learn depends on the patience and skill of teachers, aides and classmates.

Starting this school year, the children must receive four hours of daily classes dedicated to learning English. State officials hope the new approach will help students become proficient in the language within a year or two, so they can master other subjects.

Teachers in the classes must eventually complete training in a new prescriptive curriculum. Schools that do not follow the new game plan will not get extra money the state has promised to help reimburse the cost of implementing the new program.

High schools are in a good position to adapt. They have fewer language learners, offer more direct language instruction already and have more flexible scheduling. Elementary educators find the new rules confusing and say they require an abrupt change in thinking, scheduling and teaching.

"It seems like the playing field is constantly changing with English-language instruction," Casa Grande Elementary Superintendent Frank Davidson said. "We just think we have figured out what the state is doing, and the rules change."

About half the 18,000 elementary students at Phoenix's Cartwright School District are still learning English. Superintendent Mike Martinez worries the new model will segregate kids, push more training onto overburdened teachers and create scheduling and class-size problems. He supports it anyway.

Once his students get past the primary grades, their language development seems to stop and they fall behind. Martinez hopes the additional time and grammar study will stop the downward trend he sees in grades and test scores of English learners across the state.

"Our biggest problem with English-language learners is our failure as educators to pin down what really works. It's all over the map,'' he said.

Marina Acosta, 18, supports the change. She began learning English in third grade in Phoenix's Madison School District. She spent half her day in intense language-instruction classes and the other half in regular classes for two years.

She said she outpaced her friends at Phoenix's Carl Hayden High School, who received only an hour a day of English in elementary school.

"The teachers actually set them aside and let them do something else other than the class work because they didn't understand the concept," said Acosta, now a freshman at Arizona State University. "I thought that was pretty bad."

About 14 percent of the 2,800 students in Tolleson Elementary District are still learning English. Superinten-dent Bill Christensen said placing English-learners into mainstream classrooms is tough on teachers.

They must learn to group students and create lesson plans that both guide the English- learners and keep all students at and beyond grade level.

Yet Christensen said the new four-hour-a-day model is a step backward, segregating English learners and costing his district too much money in teacher training and space.

"We really don't like getting into a situation where we feel we're not doing what's good for kids," Christensen said.

Casa Grande resident Brenda Wagenknecht, 34, is a teacher and a mother of three. She has heard the complaints before: Too many language learners in a regular classroom make it difficult to elevate the level of teaching for all kids. Wageknecht knows many parents hold this view, but it's not hers.

"As a parent, I appreciate the diversity in Arizona. I would hate to see those kids separated," said Wagenknecht, who will have two children in Casa Grande Elementary District this fall. Wagenknecht moved to the state three years ago and teaches in the small Toltec Elementary District in Eloy.

Placing too many kids in one classroom, not the English- learners, is Arizona's biggest hurdle to raising the quality of learning, she said.

"If you get class sizes down, you take care of issues schools are facing, including English language learners and the needs they have," said Wagenknecht.

Mexican cities along border want their due
Mayors from coalition to 'make more noise'

By Diane Lindquist
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 14, 2007

TIJUANA – Mayors from across northern Mexico formed a new organization yesterday to push border issues higher on the Mexican government's agenda.

Ten mayors from mostly northwestern border cities created the Association of Northern Mexico Border Municipalities after a two-day meeting at the Camino Real Hotel in Tijuana.

“Here at the border we feel abandoned by the rest of the country because they don't understand our problems. We as a bloc need to make more noise,” said Tijuana Mayor Kurt Honold, who promoted the meeting and creation of the association.

Rodulfo Martinez Ortega, counsel to the mayor of Ciudad Juarez on the Texas border, said that while the northern tier of Mexico drives the country's growth, the region receives little in federal tax revenue. Out of every dollar for the country's tax income, he said, only 4 cents stays in the border region.

“It's urgent to address these issues,” he said. “This is a small step that will lead to positive results.”

The group's formation follows an effort that northern border governors started last year in Mexicali to address the same issues. The six border states – Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas –produce about a quarter of Mexico's gross domestic product and account for 15 percent of Mexico's population of 107 million.

Many of the region's chambers of commerce, which represent maquiladora factories, tourism operators and other business groups, are involved in both efforts to draw more attention to the northern frontier.

They also have the support of cities and organizations on the U.S. side of the border.

“What helps Tijuana helps San Diego, so we expect to work together to find success,” said Ruben Barrales, president and chief executive of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Six issues, most of which are interconnected, were addressed at the meeting:

Public safety. The region's leaders want the federal government to do more to combat trafficking in drugs, other contraband and people at the border. The situation not only endangers area residents, they said, but also hurts foreign investment and tourism.

Maquiladoras. The manufacturing operations, mostly concentrated in the border region, would take hits in profit and competitiveness from President Felipe Calderon's fiscal tax reform. Meeting participants called for changes in the new tax code. More also needs to be done, Honold said, to encourage domestic producers to make components for the dynamic sector.

Tourism. Several municipal representatives called for a special promotional campaign to draw more visitors from the United States to the border region.

Commerce. High Mexican import taxes raise the prices of many of the products purchased at the border – so much so that Mexican border residents can find the identical goods for less in the United States.

Immigration. The border region is affected by migrants traveling through the area to cross into the United States to find jobs. The situation has worsened since U.S. agents have undertaken mass deportations of migrants apprehended on the U.S. side of the border, meeting participants were told.

As many as 8,000 to 10,000 are deported from San Diego to Tijuana a month, Honold said. The deportees, many of them criminals, resort to stealing and drug use to get by in Mexico.

“We need to get both countries together and send these people to their homes,” he said.

Border crossings. Bottlenecks at existing crossings are disrupting business and social and family ties along the U.S.-Mexico border, conference participants said. They urged both countries to move more quickly and consider using private resources to increase the number of crossings.

Manlio Fabio Beltrones, president of the Mexican Senate and former governor of the border state of Sonora, said he will work on creating a mechanism to deal with the issues.

“The fact that the federal government doesn't address these problems might be because there's no structure to do so,” he said. “I will work to create a commission to address problems at the border.”

Who paid for this?
Tijuana's sophisticated surveillance system cost at least $15 million. But no one seems to be able to answer this question

By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 14, 2007

Tijuana has installed a sophisticated public-security system that is the envy of police departments around the world, but city officials don't seem to know details about how it is funded or the background of the company that supplied it.

Staff at the command center for Tijuana's security system monitored a bank of screens showing images from surveillance cameras around the city. The lack of public information about the program has been criticized by several Tijuana City Council members.

The system is a high-tech combination of cameras, emergency call buttons on red posts and handheld computers for police officers on the street.

Information is routed through a central command center that is equipped with 60 video screens and staffed 24 hours a day. A map of the city displays the location of patrol cars tracked by Global Positioning System devices.

Estimated to cost at least $15.5 million to start, the program has been touted as a major initiative under the administration of former Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, a wealthy businessman who is running for governor of Baja California.

The system includes hundreds of emergency call buttons around the city that, when pressed, trigger an alarm in the command center.


Tijuana Security System By The Numbers

The program includes a command center open 24 hours and staffed by civilians, as well as:

363 emergency button posts

3,000 emergency alarms

413 surveillance video cameras, including 68 that swivel toward the sound of gunfire

36 speed radar cameras

300 GPS devices placed in patrol cars so they can be monitored from the command center

150,000 photos entered in a facial recognition system intended to assist in identifying detainees

SOURCE: Command center staff

Despite much publicity, questions remain over how Tijuana, a city with limited funds and pressing community needs, managed to pay for what is considered a costly endeavor even for U.S. cities.

It's also unclear who exactly is behind the company that provided the system, which became operational in late 2005, and continues to have a role in its operations. Global Corp. Tijuana S.A. de C.V. is not registered with the state and has no listed phone number.

The company is connected with Global Sight, a security-system distributor based out of Chihuahua, Mexico. Records of who registered the business weren't available.

City Council members who are part of the minority National Action Party, or PAN, say they support modernizing public security but oppose secrecy.

“We don't know what is the background of the company,” said Raúl Soria Mercado. “We have always been asking for transparency in this administration, and it doesn't exist.”

The lack of information raises questions over who could be benefiting financially from the project.

It also illustrates that despite steps to improve government transparency, such as the formation of an office at City Hall to respond to public records requests, Mexico is still bound by old habits that undercut the democratic process.

Despite having pushed for the program, Hank said this week that he didn't know who owned Global Corp. or what the company's contractual arrangement was with the city.

The electronic brains behind much of the security system is in the city's command center in Zona Rio, a Tijuana business district. About 36 people staff the 24-hour operation. They control the movement of more than 400 surveillance cameras mounted around the city. The images show up on the center's 65-foot-by-13-foot montage of screens. Staffers report suspicious activities or emergencies to police.

The city is continuing to add cameras to the system, which has a capacity for 3,000, said Javier García Gastelum, director of the center. García said the project cost $15.5 million; Hank said it cost $18.6 million.

The outcome of the project is expected to reflect on Hank, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, candidate who is in a hotly contested race for governor against PAN candidate José Guadalupe Osuna Millán.

Suspicious activity or emergencies that show up on video footage taken by more than 400 cameras in Tijuana and transmitted to the command center in the Zona Rio business district are reported to police.

Hank, who oversees a gaming empire in Mexico called Grupo Caliente, comes from a wealthy family with deep political roots and connections.

His apparent lack of a need to raid city coffers – as other Tijuana politicians had done – was one reason why people supported him for mayor. Although Hank has been dogged by allegations of illicit activities in the past, he has never been charged.

City officials say the public-security program has benefited the community. One command center operator said it has assisted in 12,800 detentions from April 2006 to April 2007. García said a 70 percent decline in traffic accidents can be attributed to people driving more cautiously under the watchful eye of the speed radar cameras.

García said he and the other command center staffers work for the city of Tijuana. The contracting company's duties, he said, involve installation, fixing technological glitches and training.

Critics say the company's exact role and access to the system is unclear. Global Corp. has an office in the same building as the command center, even though García said it worked off-site.

Speaking from Mexico City, Pedro Flores said he oversees a consortium of security companies including the one in Tijuana, but he couldn't say who owns them.

“Our company is funded by different institutions, and I wouldn't be able to say who benefits from that,” Flores said.

He said the companies are registered in Mexico City and declined to comment on specifics of the contract, citing confidentiality agreements.

None of the city officials in Tijuana contacted this week mentioned any confidentiality clause.

“I'm just interested in the results,” said Kurt Honold, the interim mayor who is a close associate of Hank. “It's a very good project.”

The company's name first showed up in a city budget report from December 2004, when Hank became mayor. At that time, about 9 million pesos – or $835,000 – was earmarked for the company.

Command center Director Javier García Gastelum said Tijuana's public security project cost $15.5 million, while former Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon put the cost at $18.6 million.
Hank said this week that the city hired the company during his mayoral campaign “to do the design and everything.” After he was elected, “We had a bid and they won,” he said.

PAN council members said there was no public bid for the bulk of the project, in part because the PRI majority rewrote city codes in 2005 to bypass the bidding process for public security systems.

Hank said the Electronic Government Program was paid for by shifting funds in the city's budget, though some of the cameras were donated by local businesses such as his own.

Tijuana had an annual budget of about $282 million in 2006, according to the city's Web site.

PAN officials said no one ever explained to them how the equivalent of 6 percent of the city's annual budget was found for the program.

Budget documents show that about $7 million has gone to Global Sight since 2004, but PAN council members said additional money may be listed in different budget categories.

Frustrated with the lack of information, they voted against motions that paved the way for the program's implementation, such as one that changed traffic codes to include the use of technology.

The motions nonetheless passed, because the PRI has a majority on the council.

In December 2006, the PRI majority voted to extend the contract – this time naming Global Corp. – to 10 years. A copy of the motion says this was needed to guarantee “the legal certainty in regard to investments, capital recuperation terms, and to avoid the actualization of damages.”

No further information was provided. Hank said the company was receiving a portion of the collected speeding fines, but he didn't know how much.

“The law gives the mayor certain abilities to make these decisions, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't inform us,” said Raúl Castañeda Pomposo, a PAN councilman who is a member of the City Council's Public Security Commission.

The San Diego Union-Tribune filed a public information request regarding part of the program: handheld computers that police use to record traffic infractions and collect payments through credit cards.

In a written response, Tijuana officials said the computers were acquired at “no cost.” When asked if they were donations, the city didn't answer. Instead, officials wrote back that the computers are part of the Electronic Government Program.

Allegations of government secrecy in public matters aren't limited to the PRI in Tijuana. In 2002, a Baja California newspaper, La Crónica, reported that the Mexicali city government bought cars from a dealership owned by Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther without conducting a thorough bidding process, as well as other alleged misdeeds by PAN governments.

César René Blanco Villalón, co-editor of Zeta, a Tijuana weekly that regularly does investigative reporting, said such stories don't typically lead to changes, in part because a disillusioned public doesn't push for them. Zeta has written two stories about the surveillance company's secrecy.

“It's a scandal for a week, and the people get angry, but then they forget about it as the next scandal takes over,” he said.

His colleague Adela Navarro said lack of government transparency is a frustrating reality in Mexico, “and here in particular.”

Luis Javier Algorri Franco, the city's top public security official, said that perhaps people aren't looking for information with the right city department.

He and other city officials directed questions about the program's funding to one of the administration's top officials, Victor Raul Padilla Fitch, who didn't respond to phone calls or visits.

Meanwhile, the command center has been receiving visitors from Russia, Canada, England, China and the United States, where such programs are expanding.

In San Diego, police have 14 surveillance cameras that were obtained through government grants and private donations. But the Police Department doesn't have the resources to operate 24 hours, as in Tijuana.

“It's very impressive,” said San Diego police Sgt. Juan Gonza***, who visited the Tijuana center this week. “It just shows that the technology is available and it's just about finding the resources to implement some of that here.”

Additional government grants could be used to extend San Diego's program, Gonza*** said. But he added that it's unlikely the city of San Diego – with a budget of about $1.1 billion – would have the means to pay for it on its own.

Border agent reportedly fires at group

UNION-TRIBUNE
July 14, 2007

At least one U.S. Border Patrol agent fired at a group of people in Mexico reportedly throwing rocks across the border last night, San Diego police said. It wasn't known if anyone was wounded.

Police said they were called to assist agents along the border in the Tijuana River Valley area south of Monument Road and Hollister Street about 8 p.m.

An initial report was that a group of people in Mexico were throwing rocks at agents and that one or more agents had shot someone. No victim was found on the U.S. side, police said. No information was released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection last night.

Mexico finds 81 Central Americans stashed in truck

By Robin Emmott
REUTERS
July 12, 2007

MONTERREY, Mexico – Troops in northern Mexico discovered 81 Central Americans abandoned in a truck near the U.S. border after two days in searing heat, darkness and no food or water, the government said Thursday.

Mexican soldiers found the migrants, including women and children, squeezed together lying down in the truck near a military checkpoint Wednesday outside the small town of Hualahuises in Nuevo Leon state near the Texan border after hearing voices inside.

It was not clear why the truck had been abandoned. Hidden under a fake floor covered with decorative plants, the migrants were left on the side of a freeway in 95-degree Fahrenheit heat in the semi-desert countryside.

“They were lucky to be alive,” said Frances Garcia, a spokeswoman for the Mexican immigration institute in Monterrey.

“There were women and children among them and they had been hidden inside for two days, relying only on a few energy drinks to round,” she added.

The 65 Salvadorans, 14 Hondurans and two Guatemalans paid $3,600 each to people smugglers to make the journey from the Guatemalan border to the United States, the institute said.

Mexico will repatriate the Central Americans over the next few days, Garcia said.

Millions of Mexicans and Central Americans try to slip into the United States every year to look for work, attracted by U.S. wages at six to seven times those in their home countries.

Increased U.S. border security has pushed immigrants to rely heavily on people smugglers and to try more innovative ways to get across, including hiding in car fuel tanks and dashboards.